


The Hand You're Dealt

by greywing (ctrlx)



Series: End of 2013 Orphan Black Prompt Fills [3]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-24
Updated: 2014-01-24
Packaged: 2018-01-09 19:42:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1150031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ctrlx/pseuds/greywing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Jealous Delphine</p><p>If only things could be simpler. But they aren't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hand You're Dealt

They were young. In years. In intimacy. Crammed in the booth beside each other. Snuggled into the corner so that their bodies met along every point from shoulders to knees, probably from knees to toes, feet wrapped around ankles or edging up shins and calves in the shadow of the tabletop unseen. 

They exchanged words--and kisses, pecks, favors sought with lips pursed in waiting expectation--with heads bent close as if to breathe in each other's messages, replies relayed by way of smiles and giggles or the ineffectual swat at an arm, blows slight and glancing and thus somehow playful or helpless in the most appealing way. Contact they stole like pickpockets, quickly and lightly, fingers alighting upon forearms, caressing across knuckles, resting upon a thigh, conversation undisturbed, eye contact maintained, even under the pretense of a collar being straightened, a strand of hair being tucked away. Some tactile compulsion goaded them to touch continuously and restlessly, sensibilities not yet familiar with the extent of boundaries, of the permissible, and yet all frontiers inviting beneath collapsed notions of independence and individuality, limits of socializing not yet taxed and demanding space. 

They seemed to occupy a bubble. Shielded from the awareness of outside surveillance. In their newness warded even from each other. No past. No future. Just now. The present. This touch. Those words. These looks. Adoration untainted and unstained by the frictions of history, of transgressions, of the ugliness of reality viewed unveiled. 

"Do you recognize them?"

The low whisper drew Delphine's head around. "What?"

Expression pinched in consternation, Cosima folded her arms upon the tabletop and leaned toward Delphine from across the table, casting herself unmindful over the mostly empty plates and dishes and glasses spread between them. "Are they from DYAD? Should we go?"

Delphine stared at her and breathed, "Who?"

Cosima indicated the table across the aisle with a jerk of her head. "Them."

Involuntarily, Delphine's eyes darted to the table indicated, to the young man and woman now sharing an enthusiastic kiss. She reeled in her gaze, jerked it back to Cosima, as heat suffused her cheeks and burned to the tips of her ears. "What? No. No no."

Cosima inspected Delphine, eyes narrowed and forehead crinkled. "Okay," she intoned with a lilt of uncertainty. She sat back in the booth seat, lips pursing thoughtfully, and unfolded her arms, splaying her hands wide on the table. "You were staring at them."

Delphine tittered. "No, I wasn't." 

Her curt insistence prodded Cosima's lips into the mold of an uncertain smile. She regarded Delphine from an angle. "Alright, I wasn't sure, but now I'm convinced: You were staring at them."

"No," Delphine protested. "I was, um, staring off into, into..." _Le vide_ , Delphine's brain clamored unhelpfully. The English term eluded her, tripped up her tongue, stalling her objection. Cosima raised an eyebrow. Delphine huffed and ignored it. "I was staring into space."

"I considered that," Cosima said, smile emboldened into confident, "and if that were true, you wouldn't have been so quick to deny it. You were staring at them." Her head lolled upon her neck, dreadlocks cascading, as she turned to survey the couple, perspective tilted and lazy as she propped her jaw upon her knuckles. 

"What caught your attention?" she mused. "Him?" Her lips twitched. "Her? They're both lookers."

A laugh bubbled out of Delphine, a defense against her nerves, a vent for embarrassment and tension. "You think so?"

"I'm asking what you think," Cosima said, head swiveling around in that owlish manner of hers.

Delphine shook her head. "It was nothing like that."

"So you were staring at them," needled Cosima triumphantly. She cast her gaze again across the aisle, making no attempt at discretion. "But not to admire them."

"I didn't say that," Delphine murmured, still reluctant to admit outright to the charge of staring. Her fingers plucked at the edge of a crumpled paper napkin near at hand.

Cosima studied her out of the corner of her eye. "You didn't? Okay, let's say you didn't. Which means that you were staring at them--to admire them," she enumerated slowly, gaze narrowed as she reviewed the exchanges of their conversation, the detective within her, that instinct for recognizing patterns and searching for discrepancies, engaged in the game of finding the missing, illuminating piece. Even with that perceptiveness, that restive intelligence arrayed against her, Delphine admired the unselfconscious animation they lent to Cosima's features. "But not... not just him. Not just her." Her gaze darted back to observe the subjects in question. "Them. You were looking at them, together."

"Yes," Delphine uttered.

The confirmation infused Cosima's face with self-satisfaction that promptly dissolved into puzzlement when she returned her attention to Delphine. "Why?"

Delphine shrugged.

"No, really." Cosima sat up straighter, the hand that had been supporting her head dropping unceremoniously onto the table. "Why? Oh. Wait. Is this a voyeurism fetish thing? It's cool if it is. We don't have to talk about it."

Lips parted, Delphine gaped at Cosima, amazed at the speed of her mind, its agility, the twists and turns it traversed without hesitation or unease. She shook her head, finding another laugh, a sound scarcely more than a gasp. "No. It's not--" Her hair swayed with a second shake of her head. She pushed it back. "They look good together." 

Cosima's head whipped around to scrutinize the couple as if to evaluate Delphine's assessment. Unobserved by Cosima, Delphine added, "They look--" She halted, fixing closely upon the set and lines of Cosima's face. "--happy." Tension pulled at the brunette's pale lips. "Carefree." Her mouth flattened, sealed. "Like they don't have secrets." The muscles relaxed, jaw unclenching, stilling. 

"You don't know that," Cosima averred, casual almost, but with an edge that Delphine felt slip beneath her skin, poking, probing. "They could have secrets." Cosima twisted in her seat to sit more properly, eyes lowered, moving with a deliberation that was in the language of her movements too stiff for nonchalance. "They could have a ton of secrets." Cosima raised a hand in a gesture of carelessly tossing out a spare thought, head swaying to one side. "They could be Mr. and Mrs. Smith." Confusion clouded Delphine's eyes. Cosima didn't pause, torso rocking in the opposite direction. "They could be having an affair. He could be married--" Mischief flashed in the slant of her lips, her darkly lined eyes finding and holding Delphine's. "--with three wives. She could have another boyfriend--or a girlfriend on the side. He could be using a false name. She could be a hustler planning to rob him." 

Delphine laughed. "Stop, stop."

"Maybe he has a hobby she doesn't know about that would creep her out," Cosima continued. "Maybe she owns ten cats and he won't tell her he's allergic. Maybe he has a drag queen alter ego who looks dismayingly better in makeup than she does."

Delphine covered her eyes and shook her head. "Stop, please."

Cosima interlaced her fingers and leaned into her forearms, elbows unashamedly planted on the table. "She could be a superhero who calls off dates all the time with lame excuses to fight crime. He could be a shapeshifting alien trying to learn what human emotions are. She could be a time traveler trying to ensure he lives to save the future. He could be a serial killer--"

"Of course he would be a serial killer and not she," Delphine commented mildly through a smile. 

"Statistically," Cosima drawled, inclining briefly toward Delphine, "it's more likely he would be and not she, but, fine, if you want, she could be a serial killer and he may be in for a very nasty surprise."

Delphine simply looked at Cosima, mouth upturned into the suggestion of a smile, gaze soft, looking almost relaxed, all of her appearance a contrast to the crackle and tremble of her voice proposing, "He could be the subject of an experiment and she a scientist sent to keep tabs on him."

Cosima rested her head upon her hands. "They could be. And have no idea." Her eyebrows rose and fell. "Or maybe they do."

Delphine snuck a peek at the couple. Dessert had been delivered to them at some point, a small fudge-topped sundae. The two took turns offering each other spoonfuls, missing each other's mouths, dabbing away the resultant smears--or licking them up. Delphine retreated to the safer sight of the napkin she had been fiddling with earlier, flicked at it with her fingertips. "They look happy, for all that they might be." She bit at her lip. "I wish--"

"Delphine."

Delphine raised her head. Cosima hadn't moved, cheek pressed into her hands, weight suspended upon her arms, gazing at Delphine steadily. Delphine wondered what she saw. The friend? The monitor? The lover? The spy? 

She felt like none of those things now. She doubted sometimes she had been any of those things.

Delphine cracked a rueful smile. "Would things make more sense if--if I could shoot a gun and protect you from danger and fight your enemies?"

Cosima's face scrunched into bewilderment. "Are you being serious? Or is this the effect of diner grease and milkshakes on your delicate French stomach?"

Delphine tried to laugh. "I meant--"

"Do you think that's what I want?" Cosima pressed, eyebrows furrowed. "Because there's an option for that and his name is Paul. Unless what you're really trying to say is that you're interested in Sarah?"

"What?" Delphine stammered.

"Because I hate to tell you that Sarah doesn't like scientists. And I don't think I'd be into Paul--even if he is hot. Although," Cosima pondered aloud, "there's something to be said about a woman in uniform."

"You think Paul is attractive?" Delphine asked, clutching at the tangent in the torrent that rang with any sense.

Cosima shrugged. "Beth thought he was. So does Sarah." 

"What do you think?"

"That you're not him," Cosima said shortly. "And I'm not Beth--or Sarah. What works for them doesn't necessarily apply to you and me. We're not them--" She jerked her head to indicate the couple. "--either. Our circumstances aren't like anyone else's. No one's is."

"But--"

"I know," Cosima said. "But I don't think blasting down doors is who Delphine Cormier is." One hand untangled from the other, reached out, hovered, hesitated, and then settled atop Delphine's. Cosima's thumb stroked across Delphine's knuckles, sending a shiver up Delphine's arm that raised goosebumps. "That's the person I want to get to know. That's the person I want on my side. Okay?"

Delphine bowed her head. In the peripheral of her vision, the couple shifted. The man slipped his arm around the woman's shoulders and held her close. Delphine shut her eyes, felt the warmth of Cosima's touch upon her hand, the gentle passes of her fingertips across her skin, each nerve beneath their path awakened and attuned, eager for the next caress.

Keeping her head bowed, Delphine opened her eyes. She turned her palm up, slowly so as not to signal discouragement, curled her fingers, and captured Cosima's hand. She raised her eyes to the ones watching her. Her grip tightened. 

"Okay."


End file.
